Close Up (Jan-Jun 1928)

Record Details:

Title:
Close Up
Date:
Jan-Jun 1928
Publisher:
[London, etc., Pool]
Volume:
Close up ... devoted to the art of films
Leaf #:
00046
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Collection:
Switzerland, Early Cinema, and Global Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Library of Congress, MBRS, Moving Image Section
Sponsor:
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
As an active film magazine, CLOSE UP lasted only a short time, from 1927 to 1933. Yet the legacy of this English-language periodical, which was published in Switzerland, continues to matter. Edited by Bryher and her husband Kenneth Macpherson, CLOSE UP became THE magazine for energetic debates about the nature of cinema and manifestos imagining new forms of filmmaking and spectatorship. The magazine published articles by filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein, and female literary modernists, such as H.D. and Gertrude Stein. As film scholar Anne Friedberg explains in the anthology CLOSE-UP, 1927-1933: CINEMA & MODERNISM, 'CLOSE UP became the model for a certain type of writing about film -- writing that was theoretically astute, politically incisive, critical of films that were simply 'entertainment.' For six and a half years, CLOSE UP maintained a forum for a broad variety of ideas about the cinema; it never advocated a single direction of development, but rather posed alternatives to existing modes of production, consumption, and film style.' Like Friedberg's own writing, CLOSE UP continues to be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of film and media theory. -- Eric Hoyt, 2014
Date Added:
August 28, 2022
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CLOSE UP Wild Love with Merian Cooper's Grass and the Hollywood ideas and behavior at once swamp whatever is authentic in Wild Love. There is an essence of screen material in the settings of Wild Love but in story, acting, and photography it is straight from the Hollywood studios and locations, no matter where it was taken, how they live in the Alleghenies, and who acted the roles. Now you wTill all faint with horror. I have a good word for Clara Bow in Hula ! The story is competently written sentimental-farce-melodrama, to borrow a category from the notebook of Polonius. And that is the sort of thing that can be done by the Hollywood technique. The characters are all well made screen robots who cannot be mistaken for real people any more than the present government of Russia can be mistaken for communism or socialism except by those whose ideals of life and human nature are derived from the silver screen. For others there is no jarring note of reality to break the illusion of authenticity. The sex appeal is moderately frank and pleasantly vulgar. The setting is almost without exception screen material. The photography is as good as conventional technique can make it, and I believe that in this sort of film, eccentric angles or anything like Jannings composition would spoil the essential artificiality by selective intelligence, which could not look upon life and see anything like Hula. The thrills of melodrama are effectively obtained. The circus laughs of farce come spontaneously at situation, character, and action, as well as at the sure fire smartalec leaders. The falseness of the fife, which 30